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Jul 22, 2019 at 7:30 PMJul 22, 2019 at 7:57 PM

Data gathered last spring shows that if people stop feeding coyotes, the animals will have little reason to come into their neighborhoods and will be more likely to stay within the forests and fields that are their natural habitat.

If you leave food out where coyotes can get to it, you’ll probably attract coyotes.

Conservation biologist Numi Mitchell and other experts have been making that point for years, arguing that the key to reducing unwanted contact with coyotes in residential areas in Rhode Island is changing the behavior of homeowners who feed birds, feral cats and, yes, in some instances on purpose, even coyotes.

Proving their contention has been more difficult, says Mitchell, when some would rather see problem coyotes shot or moved elsewhere.

But this last spring, Mitchell, the principal investigator for the federally funded Narragansett Bay Coyote Study, collected data showing a near-cessation in coyote traffic in a neighborhood in northern Portsmouth following the apparent removal of two food sources provided by residents.

It shows that if people stop feeding coyotes, the animals will have little reason to come into their neighborhoods and will be more likely to stay within the forests and fields that are their natural habitat, Mitchell says.

“Coyotes become a non-issue if they’re not baited into neighborhoods,” she said on a recent morning in her home office in Jamestown.

The results make sense, said state wildlife biologist Charlie Brown, who has seen the tracking data. Coyotes are opportunistic eaters that will go to the most convenient source of food, whether it be a bowl of dog food left outside, a deer carcass on the side of the road or pears that have fallen to the ground in an orchard, said Brown, of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

“I think it is pretty clear,” he said of Mitchell’s data. “We do have some control. These human food sources are providing sustenance to coyotes, and by controlling these things we can affect coyotes’ behavior.”

Mitchell has been studying coyote activity on Aquidneck Island since 2004, and was awarded a $1.1-million grant last fall to expand her work statewide. Almost from the beginning of her research, she had wanted to carry out an experiment in which she could track the animals’ behavior when a food source is set out for them and follow their response after it’s been removed.

The conditions fell into place after she trapped a coyote in Portsmouth a few months ago and fitted him with a GPS collar.

Based on travel vectors and location points recorded by the collar from early April to mid-May, the animal she named “Hanks” was shown to be frequenting two homes in a single neighborhood where she surmised that food was being put out.

Mitchell said there would have been no other reason for Hanks to be stopping at those homes so often and not doing the same at other residences in the area. Brown agreed that the pattern strongly suggested that feeding was taking place.

State regulations prohibit the feeding of coyotes, and Portsmouth, along with the other Aquidneck Island communities and Jamestown, have enacted ordinances that subject residents to fines if they are caught doing so.

After Mitchell alerted the Portsmouth Police Department to the activity, animal control officer Elizabeth Futoma visited one of the homes to warn the owner about feeding coyotes. Mitchell and another researcher in her study went to the other.

Within weeks, presumably after the feeding stopped, coyote activity in the neighborhood nearly disappeared. Not only was Hanks, who was probably accompanied on his expeditions by other members of his pack, no longer visiting the onetime feeding sites, he was no longer traversing local streets and neighborhood yards to get to them, reducing the risk to people and pets.

Futoma is hoping that what Mitchell has learned with Hanks can be applied to other areas and believes that having hard evidence on feeding habits will make it easier to persuade people to make changes.

“The goal really is education of the public,” she said. “Some people may not be aware that what they are doing is attracting coyotes. They need to realize that their actions have direct impacts on wildlife.”

A native of the nation’s prairies that first appeared in Rhode Island in 1966, the eastern coyote has become a lightning rod for controversy in the state as its range has expanded and its population has grown. The species reached Aquidneck Island in the mid-1990s and is found today in every community in the state except Block Island. Complaints have followed about coyotes snatching cats and dogs and menacing neighborhoods.

The debate reached a fever pitch three years ago in Middletown, when a coyote named “Cliff” that was collared by Mitchell was at the center of what became an international campaign to save him from being killed.

Cliff was targeted for shooting because he had become too comfortable around people, relying on humans for food and sauntering, unfazed, close to families. In response to the outcry, he was instead moved to an undisclosed location in Rhode Island. It’s not known where he is now, or if he’s still alive.

The decision to remove Cliff was an anomaly, but similar requests have been made since. Last month, residents of the Sea Meadow neighborhood in Portsmouth asked the DEM to eliminate or relocate a coyote pack that they said had killed at least two dogs and injured another in a matter of weeks. The agency turned them down, offering instead to work with them on eliminating possible sources of food.

Mitchell supported the killing of Cliff because he’d become such a problem, but she says that shooting or removing coyotes is not the answer to keeping them out of neighborhoods.

Coyote packs, which typically number two pairs of adults and annual litters of seven or so pups, stake out territories of about 3½ square miles. Because there are always transient coyotes in search of territory, the removal of a pack will only open an area to more animals, leading for a time to even more activity.

Food is not only important in directing coyote behavior, it’s also a determining factor in litter sizes. The more food available to adult coyotes, the more pups they’ll produce. If food is limited, the population will drop.

As a counterpoint to Hanks’ encroachment into residential areas in Portsmouth, Mitchell pulled up tracking data on her computer for a coyote that she collared last fall in the Matunuck area of South Kingstown. Named “Ghost,” he has largely avoided homes and yards, sticking instead to green spaces to hunt for natural prey, such as rabbits or woodchucks.

It appears that people haven’t been putting food out in the area, she said. And she also theorized that some residents may be shooting at him and his pack, ensuring that they remain wary of humans.

“He is coexisting beautifully with these people,” Mitchell said. “He knows the rules and the rules are: stay away from people.”

— akuffner@providencejournal.com

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